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Something Congress shouldn’t do, aircraft edition

So, here’s an embarrassing confession for a foreign policy geek: I’m afraid to fly. And I mean — medication, alcohol, hold-the-hand-of-strangers afraid to fly. Do you want to hear about the problems with the Airbus 380 and wing strut cracks? Come to me. The Boeing Dreamliner battery problem? I am your man. Are you interested in why Air France 442 crashed en route from Brazil to France in 2009? I have read the cockpit transcripts, can tell you what happened, and have repeatedly imagined how passengers watched as they slowly dropped from five miles altitude to 2000 feet with a team of fools at the helm.

Then there’s the question of what Congress should do about these issues: The same people who brought you the Department of Homeland Security (remind me to tell you about my recent secondary check for explosives with TSA). The same folks who bring you a Department of Defense that believes in green energy research over national security. The same Congress that has failed to stop more than one trillion dollars in defense cuts.

Please, Congress, do nothing. Please, stay out of it. Please, let markets work and let companies that hear their customers (including the paranoid customer here) fix their products. Stay out of these tabloid-style inquiries and stick to fixing the economy. Or our national security challenges. Or the sequester. Or Syria. Iran. Al Qaeda. Egypt. Aren’t you busy enough doing nothing about those things?